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On Friday, the Department of Defense announced a number of smallish (in defense industry terms) contracts awarded to several publicly traded companies. Among these:

L-3 Communications won the largest award, a $32.4 million firm-fixed-price contract to supply operational flight trainers and spare parts and to perform logistics support. Specifics were few in the announcement, but part of the work is to be performed in Taiwan, suggesting a foreign military sales component to the work. The completion date was set for Christmas Eve 2016.

Raytheon won a $24.6 million firm-fixed-price, sole-source contract to supply components for Boeing's F/A-18 fighter jets to both U.S. Navy and foreign military customers. This contact expires on April 30, 2016.

Speaking of Boeing, that aerospace giant won a contract as well -- a $12.4 million award related to tests it will run on three training systems for its P-8A Poseidon subhunter aircraft using the "Test Release 12 (TR-12) aircraft software version." Boeing will also analyze changes between this version of the aircraft/software code and that of "the previously delivered Block 9.2 configuration of training devices." Work on this contract should be done by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, Boeing's Insitu unmanned aerial vehicle subsidiary won a $7.8 million modification to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price contract to perform additional operational and maintenance services work on ScanEagle unmanned aerial systems. This contract expires in January 2014.

Finally, General Dynamics' National Steel and Shipbuilding Company subsidiary was awarded a $10.4 million modification to a previously awarded contract for work it will perform on deactivating the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65). Work on this portion of the project will be complete by June 2013.